From My Bookshelf: “Helpful to Israel and the Jewish People”–An Interview with Nora Gold

FieldsofExileDr. Nora Gold’s Fields of Exile has been described as the first novel about anti-Israelism on campus, and it has received enthusiastic advance praise from Phyllis Chesler, Thane Rosenbaum, Steve Stern, and others. Gold is also the author of the acclaimed Marrow and Other Stories, which won a Canadian Jewish Book Award, as well as praise from Alice Munro, who – after reading the title story – wrote Gold: “Bravo!”

I’ve been a fan of the Toronto-based Gold and her work since reading that collection. And I’ve also had work published in Jewish Fiction.net, an online journal that Gold founded and edits. When I discovered that Fields of Exile was slated for a May 2014 release, I knew that I’d be eager to read it (and I said so in a piece for The Forward‘s Arty Semite blog at the beginning of the year). As I noted then, the new novel seems all-too-timely to anyone following news accounts about the vilification of Israel in academia. According to the novel’s publisher, Dundurn, this novel is “about love, betrayal, and the courage to stand up for what one believes as well as a searing indictment of the hypocrisy and intellectual sloth that threatens the integrity of our society.”

Gold is also a blogger for “The Jewish Thinker” at Haaretz, and the Writer-in-Residence and an Associate Scholar at the Centre for Women’s Studies in Education (CWSE) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Gold holds both Canadian and Israeli citizenship.

Please welcome Nora Gold! (more…)

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Mazel tov to the latest winners of Canadian Jewish Book Awards, who will be honored later this month.
  • A poem for Yom HaZikaron.
  • And a poem of mine.
  • New resource: YIVO Digital Archive on Jewish Life in Poland.
  • Finally, as Mother’s Day approaches here in the U.S., I recommend that you spend a few minutes watching filmmaker Judith Helfand’s “Love and Stuff” on NYTimes.com. (It would have moved me to tears even if I hadn’t known the family and attended Florence Helfand’s funeral myself.)
  • Shabbat shalom.